Arranging a visit from a Faculty Development Advisor Before the onset of Covid, Joan, Sarah and I would often conduct numerous classroom visits to provide feedback, support and coaching to those instructors who were interested. It was one part of the job that all three of us loved to do. We were able to know individual staff a little better, we could see them in action and feel their passion for teaching, and we were left with a better sense of the programs and the learners we are supporting at the college. And we were able to learn such interesting things! I remember one busy day when I started the day watching nursing students insert IV lines, then learned about irony and voice in a University Transfer course, before finishing the day with business students who were sharing their ideas for a project plan. Since the move to online learning, we haven’t been experiencing the same volume of requests for visits. There may be a number of reasons for this:
However, I wonder if many of our faculty were even aware that such an opportunity exists. Are they aware that individual faculty can get clear and concrete feedback from someone outside their department? That they can get feedback from someone whose number one job is to support teachers in every phase of their career? From someone whose job is to encourage and coach and not to evaluate? So, I thought I might use this week’s musing to describe just how a faculty observation works, to demystify the process and provide assurances that it is a friendly and confidential way to get structured feedback. Step One: Arranging a Visit! Setting up a classroom observation with a NorQuest Faculty Development Advisor (FDA) is very easy to do. You just send an email to [email protected] and ask for a visit. Myra will forward your request to the team and we’ll figure out whose schedule works best with yours. Or, if you already have a relationship with one of the FDAs and feel quite comfortable with that person, can just send them an email. At the moment we only have two FDAs, Joan and myself. But, by the end of March we should have a third, Miranda. Step 2: Setting the Context The next step would be to arrange a quick “check in” with the FDA you are working with. Before Covid, we used to meet instructors informally for a coffee by Tim Horton’s, but I guess now it will have to happen via Teams. In this check in, your FDA will want to know a little more of the context for the observation:
We also might point you to some of the feedback observation guides that were developed by Kim Goebel a few years back for observations like this or for when colleagues observe each other. These are available on the Q on the Faculty tile of the Resources page. There are a number of forms to choose from. Several are for non-teaching roles but there are at least three with slightly different lenses from which to view a synchronous teaching situation from. You can choose which of the forms you would like to use. The one Joan and I prefer asks the instructor to suggest three areas for the FDA to give feedback on. So, if you ask for feedback on your pacing and tone, that’s just what you’ll get! Step 3: The Actual Visit If the visit takes place in real time, whether online or face-to-face, it is a good thing to prepare your students for the FDA visitor. Letting the students know that you’ve invited an instructional coach to your class to observe you in action, lets them know that they are not the ones being observed. When we would conduct these observations in physical classrooms, Joan, Sarah and I would just jump right into the lesson. I relished the part of playing the student, but I tried not to be the brat that I was in junior high. Typically, I sat amongst the students, participated in all the activities, jotted a few notes, and even asked nearby students why they were taking the course, how they learned best and where they were in the program. With the move to online, such participation has become easier and harder. No longer do I stick out among them like a thorn among the roses (Just who is that old guy anyways – and what is he doing here?). Nor do I have to hide my note-taking from the students. I’m free to take part in the chat, the breakouts and the discussions. But it is harder to accurately gauge the student experience. I can’t read their faces, see their body posture, or notice when they start to check out and surf the net. I can only relate my own experience of the lesson and make notes about the kinds of interactions going on through the chat, the discussion (in the main and breakout rooms), and the activity on in-class assignments (for instance working in shared documents). Step 4: The Debrief After the observation, the FDA will need a bit of time to process their notes and think carefully about the task you gave them. Their job is not to criticize, solve or direct. Their job is to describe what they saw and experienced and ask thoughtful questions about your choices in planning and practice. Does your sense of what transpired in that class align with the student experience or with what the observer noticed? If you were to adjust the lesson, what might you change? What other possibilities might there be that could support the students as they dig deeper into the content, or as they develop their skills and attitudes? Typically, I will compile a page or two of observations, questions, and considerations and I share this document with the instructor I am debriefing with. Together we walk through the document, pausing to reflect and discuss and explore. When the debrief is over, I leave the instructor with a copy of the notes/observation form. Then, as a matter of courtesy and privacy, I delete the file from my computer. The instructor should have the only copy. What and observation is... and what it is not!To allay any fears or misgivings, I thought I’d end this musing with some assurances.
An observation from an FDA is:
An observation from an FDA is not:
This last point is one that I want to comment on further. The role of an FDA is not to evaluate faculty or to “fix” them when they are broken! We are faculty and our primary responsibility is to encourage, support and stretch our colleagues. We are instructional coaches, not instructional supervisors! This simple distinction means that we will not report on our observations to your chairs or deans! Classroom visits are completely confidential. And this confidentiality should go both ways. You are free to use the feedback, ideas and observations when you write your annual growth plans, as a way of showing how you are working on your professional goals. Your chair or dean might be interested to know that you did invite and FDA to your classroom and that together you identified some learning goals for the current year. However, individual instructors should not turn around and use a visit from an FDA as evidence of their “exceptional teaching” to impress supervisors or prospective employers. In fact, the observation notes themselves will not support this. We try to refrain from using evaluative terms like excellent, good or mediocre. Instead, our notes will be full of simple observations, questions and considerations. These notes are meant to initiate reflection and dialogue, not grade or rank. The notes are for you; not for anyone else! So, as we continue to work through teaching from home, remember that support is still here! You don not have to face it all alone. In fact, online teaching has provided a little more flexibility. If your FDA cannot make it to the online class, you could still provide a link to the recording. Or, if you are more interested in reflecting on how your learning is structured, you could ask an FDA to give you feedback on how you’ve set up your course on Moodle and how you work to provide students multiple avenues for learning – through synchronous, blended and asynchronous lessons. Just how clear are the major learning outcomes to your students? Do they clearly know what they need to do to be successful? Have you provided support, but also allowed them the agency to make choices and learn even more than you might expect? Anyway, we’re just an email away!
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AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
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